Chicago Cubs: Offense ‘Fried’ as team falls to 1-5 on the year

Chicago Cubs: Positive signs from Yu Darvish

Darvish’s season debut was as uninspiring as a start can get. However, grace should be given to him as he works his way back to meaningful starts. Thursday’s start was just his second since May 20 of last year. Hopefully, fans understand it will take time for Darvish to gain traction.

While there are still challenges ahead, and Thursday was by no means pretty, Darvish did show improvement over his last game. The right-hander failed to make it beyond the fifth inning, giving way to Carl Edwards Jr. after a difficult start. That being said, 66 percent of Darvish’ pitches landed for strikes and produced a lot more swings and misses than he did last weekend in Texas.

When looking at the box score, it shows Darvish allowed four walks in his four innings of work. As this is true, one of the free passes to account for was to Dansby Swanson as an intentional walk. Darvish walked a batter in each of the first two innings, yet the control showed up tonight that most have not seen in a while.